YMMV / Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow

• Alternative Character Interpretation: According to some fans, Toru Nakagawa's Normal Ending may be better than his Sweet one. While the Sweet Ending isn't bad or sad at all, it has Saori and Toru leaving Japan and rebuilding their lives elsewhere with the blessing of the Vigilantes; the Normal one has Toru and an Older and Wiser Saori reuniting after some years and living together in her rebuilt village, which some find far more in-character for Saori.
• Anvilicious: One of the main themes of the game is that discrimination is BAD. And it's very bluntly drilled into the plot via making Kaname die protecting people that are being treated badly, making Eduard and Yuzuki the victims of lots of prejudices in their respective routes, giving Tsubaki a Freudian Excuse based on how he and others have been judged unfairly by the Japanese society, etc.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Contrasting with Kana of Shall We Date?: Can't Say No, Saori is kind of a fan-favorite among Shall we date fans due to her Plucky Girl personality.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: All the guys have their loyal followings, but some fans have said they'd also love a Saori/Haru route.
• Funny Moments:
  • In every route, Saori's Sweet Polly Oliver stunt is eventually revealed. At times it's played seriously, but at others it's Played for Laughs: the biggest examples are Shintaro's path (first, he's absolutely flabbergasted and embarrased since he Cannot Talk to Women; later, when they officially explain themselves to the group it turns out Almost Everybody Knew Already save for a miffed Yuzuki) and Asagi's (almost everyone is nonchalant but Makoto is absolutely infuriated, yet his anger is described light-heartedly.
  • In Tsubaki's route, Okita tries to win the trust of the Vigilantes with sweets. (More exactly, Yatsuhashi). Hilarity Ensues when it almost works.
  • Zeyo's route starts in a quite more light-hearted note than the others, and its very beginning is full of hilarity.
  • In Shintaro's route, his and Saori's would-be First Kiss is interrupted when they notice that Ukyo, Yuzuki and Kagura are peeping on them. The hilarity is amped up by the arrival of Asagi, who chastises the other three for spying on Saori and her boyfriend... only for Kagura to point out that he was using his shikigami to peep too, flustering the Hell out of him.
• Heartwarming Moments: Since this game doesn't have fully bad ends, both the Normal and Sweet Endings count as these. Of special note is Toru's Normal Ending, described above.
• Iron Woobie: Saori Shishido, a Plucky Girl Action Survivor who not only loses her beloved brother but must carry on with his mission on top of hiding her true self (and not just because of the Sweet Polly Oliver disguise). And yet she's kind to a fault and never gives up on her goals.
• Narm: While one can get that the Hotter and Sexier Epilogues' narrative can't be too steamy or too vulgar (this isn't an eroge VN, after all), the Purple Prose used in it will probably make the players... giggle immaturely than arouse them.
• Tear Jerker: This may not be an utsuge, but it can quite tug at the heartstrings:
  • Logically, the Downer Beginning of a prologue where Kaname dies and Saori decides to live her life like hw would to protect her village and herself is made of tears.
  • In Shintaro's route, a Hooker with a Heart of Gold loses her beloved younger sister when the poor girl was about to get away safely from the Red Light District. When Shintaro and Saori meet up with her behind a panel, the woman cannot help crying Broken Tears as she explains her situation and pays for their work with the money she had saved to buy her sister a parting gift.
  • In Eduard's route, there is Ukyo revealing Eduard's horrifying Dark and Troubled Past to the group, few after Eduard tells him. He was a Tyke Bomb for a group fo assassins and then was used as a decoy for them and marked for death; he barely escaped with his life and collapsed near a village, where a young Ukyo saved him and adopted him as his sworn brother. All of this took place when they were younger than 12 years old, and Eduard was so traumatized that he developed Trauma-Induced Amnesia to protect himself. In-story, Ukyo is very depressed and later Saori is near driven to tears, and no one can blame them.
  • Tsubaki's path has Tsubaki revealing his actual intentions after the Vigilante kill Suetsugu... followed by Saori loudly, angrily, sadly calling him out on him playing with her burgeoning love for him. If the player has her swatting his hand away (instead of slapping him), Tsubaki's reaction all but states that he does like her for real at that point, and that he feels like crap for it.
  • Surprisingly, Toru's route has several of these. The most notorious ones are Makoto's completely heartbroken Motive Rant in which he explains how angry and sad he is after his brother's abandonment and Face–Heel Turn, Saori choosing the Vigilantes over her and Toru's love despite how it breaks her heart as well as Toru's, and their Normal Ending where, after years of being separated, Toru is allowed to spend the rest of his life in Saori's village, which she managed to rebuild and make flourish.